Chinese technology giant Huawei stated Thursday that artificial intelligence models developed domestically have not yet reached the sophistication level where they present significant safety risks, contrasting sharply with growing concerns among leading US developers.
Speaking at the company’s annual Connect conference in Shanghai, rotating chairman Eric Xu suggested that Chinese AI providers need to accelerate development before they can properly perceive and manage potential dangers from their own systems.
“If we look at the mainstream AI model providers in the United States, because they have massive computing power, maybe only they themselves know where they are in terms of the level of their models,” Xu said. “Maybe the type of risk from AI that they can feel, they can perceive, is something that people in China or AI model providers in China cannot.”
Xu emphasized the need to balance driving AI advancement with managing associated risks, noting that Chinese companies are still working to close the capability gap with American firms.
The remarks came amid heightened debate over AI safety in the United States, where developers and researchers have warned that autonomous systems could circumvent safeguards or become difficult to control. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has publicly called for slowing development to allow safety measures to keep pace.
In contrast, China has treated advanced AI as a powerful but manageable technology while rapidly deploying it across sectors. Beijing is developing mandatory standards, security assessments, and safeguards, including drafting a national standard for AI agent safety.
Huawei also issued projections outlining the future scale of autonomous AI systems. The company forecast that by 2035, autonomous AI agents would account for more than 90% of global AI processing traffic, with up to 900 billion active agents operating worldwide.
“We need to strike a balance between driving AI development and managing AI risk,” Xu said, acknowledging that Chinese providers may eventually need to speed up their pace to reach a level where they can adequately understand and address emerging dangers.
Huawei serves as China’s primary domestic supplier of computing infrastructure required to train advanced AI models, a role that expanded following US export controls imposed in 2023 that restricted Chinese companies’ access to Nvidia chips. The company acknowledged it could not produce enough AI computing equipment to satisfy all domestic demand.
China’s AI chip market is valued at approximately $50 billion, with Huawei’s position strengthened by the restrictions on foreign suppliers.
